Mission Accomplished

Well, now that we've finally achieved that goal, can we start liking ourselves too, for reasons other than "free" health care, without being required to by the CRTC? That'd be nice.

Self-fullfilling Cryptography

One of the courses I'm teaching this term is cryptography, which is, roughly speaking, the study of sending secret messages. At first glance, one wouldn't expect that very much mathematics would be involved, but even the simple schemes that I found in my children's activity books when I was young can be phrased in mathematical terminology.

Conversely, at first glance, one wouldn't expect that the mathematics involved could ever be used for cryptography. The first time I learned about the relevant mathematics, I was not aware of its application to cryptography. It was merely presented to me, like most of the math I learned, as a series of interesting and confusing but mostly useless results. In fact, when I first saw this material, it seemed to be just about the most useless and abstract math I had ever learned.

The fact that it didn't appear to have any use was not a deterrent for me. I still wanted to study it. Yet I was often asking myself "So what? Who cares about greatest common divisors and all that, other than mathematicians?" So one of my motivations when I decided I wanted to teach this course was to learn about the different ways in which this seemingly useless mathematics could be used to solve so-called "real life" problems. So here I am, teaching cryptography.

Recently I handed out on assignment, which was due this past Wednesday. I took a cursory glance at one of the assignments that was handed in and noticed a strange solution to one of the questions. But as I looked more carefully, I saw that he had done everything right.

In preparing this assignment, there were some other questions for which I needed to encode substantially large pieces of text, so I wrote some short programs to assist me. After, I saw the student's strange but correctly obtained answer, I re-examined my code. It turns out I made two small errors. In one case, I misinterpreted a command, which almost did what I wanted it to, but in the reverse order that I needed it to. In the other case, I used the wrong scheme for representing text numerically. It's more natural to represent letters A,B,...,Z by the numbers 1,2,...,26, but in cryptography, we represent A,B,...,Z by the number 0,1,...,25. I used 24 to represent the letter X, according to the more natural scheme, when I should have used 23, as any good cryptographer would. The answer that the students would come to, after doing everything as I told them to, was

ihavf nui bffn sucyfxyaseull.

Kudos to you if you could have figured out what that's supposed to say. The message that they should have gotten, had I not made those errors, is

I have not been successful.

Indeed, I have not.

The Buzz is Wearing Off

Well that didn't last long. In my previous post, I expressed my discomfort with Google's practice of automatically selecting my followers without my permission, thus allowing some people access to information about me that I would not like to share with those people. The simple fact that a person emails me a lot is not an indicator that I want them to know what I'm up to, if I actually decided that Buzz would be the conduit through which people find out what I'm up to, which I haven't and very likely won't. But regardless of the presumptuous practices of Google, I don't see Buzz catching on.

Perhaps gmail users who have been resistant to the pressures of joining Facebook will be tricked into using social media by the new Buzz. For those people, Buzz will be like those freebies they give out at Starbucks if you sit there long enough. Most people take the little sample of an item, but very few actually go and buy the item itself.

Non-gmail users who aren't using social media yet, but might, would be better off going to Facebook, which is open to gmail and non-gmail users alike and probably already has most of their friends on it, than starting up a gmail account and starting from scratch. Unlike regular gmail users, they wouldn't even have the benefit, if it can be called such, of an automatically generated list of followers and followees, since those lists are based on gmail activity, which would not yet exist in a new gmail account. On the other hand, if they want to, new users to Facebook can ask it to scour their email accounts (gmail or otherwise), for email contacts (gmail or otherwise) who are already on there.

And I doubt that many people will switch to Buzz from from its intended rivals, Twitter and Facebook. It offers fewer features than Facebook, and perhaps a few more than Twitter (which I don't use, so I don't know). Facebook users complain when the menu on the bottom right gets moved to the top left, so I doubt they'll be happy with a potential replacement that doesn't offer the menu at all. And Twitter, like blogging, is a very public thing, whereas email is private [1]. To use Buzz like Twitter, then, they would need to turn something private into something public. But why would they give up that privacy when they already have Twitter? Besides, if they really really want to use their gmail accounts for Facebook and/or Twitter, they can.

[1] I.e. although the email address might be public, if we assume that passwords have not been compromised, then only I can write to someone from my account, only they can read what I wrote to them, and vice versa.

Not what I think of when I say I'm into photography

Having discovered this site, I'm glad that I'm usually the one behind the camera. Furthermore, a greater amount of kicking and screaming will be involved in the future than there has been in the past if anybody in my family ever decides to have another family photo done. Actually, I might have some material the site could use....

Buzz Cut

Yesterday, when I loaded gmail, it asked me whether or not I wanted to use their new "Buzz" service. It's their latest attempt to ride the social media wave [1], currently led by facebook and twitter. Not knowing what it was and being impatient to see if I had any new email, I clicked "no". When gmail loaded, I noticed that there was a link to "buzz" on the gmail menu, along with a coloured icon to distinguish it from the other links.

After reading my new emails, I clicked the link hoping to satisfy my curiosity and find out what this new "Buzz" thing was. Find out, I did not. I was brought to what I'm guessing is the main Buzz page, where I discovered that I was already "following" 13 people and 4 people were already "following" me, meaning, I guess, that I can find out what 13 people are doing with Buzz, and 4 people can find out what I'm doing on Buzz, if they're so inclined.

Obviously, I never chose either my followees or my followers. Google did that for me, based solely on the numbers of emails between me and other gmail users (non-gmail users are excluded, apparently). Presumptuous as it is, the fact that Google decided which people I would follow is not so worrisome for me (although it might be for those people, depending on their opinion of me). However, I wasn't comfortable at all knowing that people would have access to information about me, without having given them my permission. I looked around for a way to remove certain followers from my list, people with whom I prefer to share little or no information. I tried, right clicking, left clicking, mousing over, but nothing worked. I suspect, though I'm not sure, that the reason for this is that these people haven't started using Buzz yet, but when they do, they will be following me. So not only did I not choose these future followers, I didn't appear to have any way of preventing them from following me if they ever do get Buzzed.

This is just one privacy issue that I've found regarding people I actually know. Those more knowledgeable than I about privacy on the internet have found their own issues about privacy regarding what information Buzz makes available, by default, to the general public.

Facebook has its own privacy issues. But at least you make the decision to sign up for it yourself, rather than have Google sign you up for it without your asking (or rather, despite your declining the invitation), and you choose your friends rather than Google making them for you. Not only that, but, even though it takes a bit of work to find and wade through facebook's privacy settings, if you're willing to root around on the menus for a few seconds, you can find them. With Buzz, there isn't a link to settings, or even to the help section for that matter.

After a bit of googling (ha), though, I managed to find the Buzz help pages. It turns out that they're embedded into the gmail help pages. I did find instructions for removing or blocking followers, but after some unsuccessful attempts at using those instructions, I decided it was best to ditch Buzz altogether.

The instructions for that are simple, if not obvious. Just look for the "turn off buzz" link in the tiny letters at the bottom of the gmail page. They're effective too. I was successful on my first attempt.

[1] They have something called "Orkut" which is also considered social media, but nobody seems to know about it outside of Iran (Really. I don't remember how I heard about it the first time, but the only people I know of who use Orkut are from Iran, where it is, apparently quite popular. But it's no facebook).

Finally Photography

Hello. I have finally taken the time to upload a bunch of pictures that I took from sometime between the third last week in August and the second Saturday of September.

Enjoy.

Thank you Mr. Libeskind

I remember when the design of the addition to the Royal Ontario Museum, called the Lee-Chin Crystal, was first announced, early in the first decade of the third millennium. I thought it was ghastly. I dismissed my opinions as those of an uncultured buffoon. My roommate at the time agreed with me, without solicitation. That made two uncultured buffoons, I guess. Perhaps this was an architectural masterpiece, and we were just too improperly educated to appreciate it. In any case, I hoped that they would reject the design and go for something else. They didn't.

My current roommate, a graduate of the Ontario College of Art & Design, feels the same way. Hmmm, so even arts students are against it.

I've yet to meet somebody who likes the design.

In any case, it's close to the end of the decade now, and they are close to finishing the project. Lucky Toronto, they are finally getting the international attention they crave.

It's days like this...

...that I'm most proud of my heritage.

Truth in

Some time ago I was flipping through the radio stations when I happened to hear about some sort of remedy to some sort of health problem that I thought I was having at the time. I don't remember what the problem was, but I didn't like it and wanted it to stop. If I'm still suffering the same disorder, I probably still don't like it. The remedy, in any case, involved magnets. I listened intently as they talked about the benefits of magnets, as I was eager to be cured of my ails. I listened until the end (which didn't take long since I tuned in half-way through), when I was informed that this was a paid advertisement. I was let down, although not too surprised. They spoke convincingly about their supposed solution, as if this solution had actually been tested, but their claims were unusual and sounded too good to be true. If I had known from the outset that I was listening to an ad, I would have changed the station immediately.

Although it takes more effort to read a paper than it does to listen to a radio station, one advantage is that when somebody publishes an advertisement that bears the appearance of an article, the newspapers have the courtesy to write a suggestive word such as "advertisement" at the top of the page. Any claims in the middle of the page that seem to be bunkum can be verified as such simply by directing one's gaze upward, thus saving a lot of time that might otherwise have been spent reading bunkum.

This being the age of free stuff on the Internet, newspapers have taken to publishing large portions of online offerings. In doing so, however, they seem to have dispensed with the courtesy of notifying their readers that what appears to be an article is in fact an advertisement.

Festive Photo

Here

Would the honourable members please stop saying stupid things

Yesterday or the day before, HBC unveiled Canada's Olympic clothing for the upcoming Vancouver 2010 Olympics. My reaction was "Ho hum. I don't think I'll buy any," the same reaction I've had for generations of Olympic clothing. Politicians don't share my views. For example Hedy Fry, Liberal MP for Vancouver Centre, has this to say.

"Here is another embarrassing example of crass politics"

She's referring to the fact that both the Conservative Party's logo and the Olympic Hockey logo consist of a stylized C with a maple leaf in the middle. I guess she failed to notice that both Canada and Conservative start with the letter "C" and both are from Canada, whose national symbols include the maple leaf. Myself I've noticed that Liberal logos tend to be mostly red, and featuring a maple leaf, much like Olympic clothing from previous years. She goes on to say,

"Can the prime minister at least stop trying to politicize the Canadian Winter Olympics?"

I think she said "prime minister" when she meant to "Hedy Fry". There's more.

"I think the government should have said ‘I think that this is too similar, people may think that there is a similarity. They may think we are trying to advertise and therefore, we shouldn't do this. Let's find a different kind of logo,' that is what (they) should have said."

From which we extrapolate the general principal that future designers of Olympic clothing should be required to exclude any symbols or colours that are part of any federal party's logo. She concludes (I hope)

"I think the government should have said ‘I think that this is too similar, people may think that there is a similarity. They may think we are trying to advertise and therefore, we shouldn't do this. Let's find a different kind of logo,' that is what (they) should have said,"

Yeah, we'll just whip up a new batch. BRB.

Sadly, Hedy Fry is not alone. From Charlie Angus, the NDP MP for Timmins-James Bay, we get

"If Minister Lunn thinks he can go into a Tim Hortons anywhere in Canada and tell an average hockey fan that this is not the Conservative party logo, then Mr. Lunn thinks the Canadians are stupider."

Fans of other sports at Tim Horton's and hockey fans at Starbucks will not likely be able to spot the similarities. I can't speak for Mr. Lunn, but I know who I think is stupider. It's not the Canadians. With all the orange on them, it's clear the NDP was involved in the design of the Dutch Soccer (sorry "football") jerseys. I bought my coffee at Tim Horton's this morning. I'm not stupid. I see their influence all over. The team kindly requests that the NDP stop interfering.

In conclusion, thank goodness for the Conservative Party of Canada that the Toronto Maple Leafs, with their blue sweaters prominently displaying a maple leaf, actually write their name on the front of their sweaters, lest the intelligentsia at Tim's across the country uncover the horrible truth that the whole team is actually just a marketing tool for the party.

Seasons

The meteorologists tell us when the seasons begin and end. Winter is the shortest day, Summer the longest. Spring begins when days become longer than nights, and Fall the opposite. They can tell us this all they want, but we all have our own definitions. Winter begins at the first snowfall and summer when the shorts come out of storage. Spring begins when the maple trees start showing signs of life and fall began yesterday.

Pics

More.

Off to a good start

Mathematics is an easy subject to study anywhere. My brain, somewhere to write my thoughts, something to write them with, and maybe a math text or two are pretty much all I need (well, those and coffee). This and a shortage of keys to my office [1] for the first half of the summer meant that I got into a routine of working either at home or at a nearby coffee shop. By the time I finally did get my key, the routine was set. Even though I had the key, I continued to work in the same old pre-key locations.

Mathematics is not an easy subject to teach anywhere, however. You need to be in a classroom, and in multi-section courses, you need to coordinate with other profs. Today, I had a meeting with the two professors who will be teaching the other sections of one of my courses. It was the first time I had been back in almost two weeks, and the first time I actually needed the office key. After the meeting, I walked toward my office, along with one of the other professors from the meeting. I reached into my pocket for my keys, then turned to the prof beside me, and said, "It wouldn't be a start of a new school year if I didn't lock myself out of my office on my first day back." Fortunately for me, the head of the department has a master key.

Sometimes the fact that I have a PhD still seems unbelievable to me. My teachers always saw the potential in me, if their report card comments can be believed, even though my grades didn't usually reflect it. I'm now finally beginning to see what they saw. Already in grade school, I was misplacing keys at the PhD level.

[1] For security reasons (which no longer seem all that relevant), RMC recently upgraded its locks to a more secure type of lock. Among its features is the difficulty of making copies. Unless you "know a guy", it can only be done by the company who installed the locks in the first place, not at the local key shop and not at any on-site facilities, and apparently it can only be done at a snails pace.

Hearing things?

The other day, I read that "Chinese is not a phonetic language." This strange, because I could've sworn I heard people speaking Chinese just the other day.

There you are now. Be entertained.

Where's Randy been? I know you've been wondering. I've been right here, and not all that busy, and enjoying it. Most of this past year, from September until the middle of June, was busy. Although I'm too lazy to check, my recollection is that there have been a rather high number of posts explaining or apologizing for my absence than posts about other topics. Much of what I've been busy with has been writing, mainly lecture notes. Textbooks contain a great deal of information, as there are no time constraints. It's a challenge to take what the textbook says, distill the important information, and compile it into something that is both succinct, complete (or at least seems complete enough to the audience that they have no follow up questions), true, and if I'm lucky, comprehensible. Perhaps for others this comes easy, but I frequently seem to get it wrong. It feels right the first time around. In the proofreading stages, however, I repeatedly realize that what I have written is not what I thought I had and is frequently flat out wrong. So I set about trying to correct my errors, scrutinizing every word, deleting, rewriting, deleting, rewriting, yet never being quite as satisfied as I was when I first wrote what I wasn't thinking but thought I was writing what I was. Even though I may have finally written what I meant to, I'm just never quite sure that I did. I get stuck in a cycle of second guessing. After nearly 10 months straight of doing that, I'm just a wee bit too weary of writing.

Plus, I got one of these in the middle of June, so I've been busy taking a lot of these [1].

[1] I took some pictures over the last few days that I also wanted to upload, but I still have a "free" account, which means I can upload at most 100MB per month. I went over that limit before the pictures finished uploading. Come back in a month. A pro account doesn't seem inordinately expensive, but given the level of attention I've paid to my account thus far, it is likely that it could still end up being a waste of money.

I'm almost 32...

...and I still can't skate like these kids.

Blog Off Hiatus

Mid June is here. I have gone to and returned from my conference. Earlier today, I handed back exams from my course, which means, aside from tweaking the spreadsheet with marks, I am more or less done with the class. I should be posting something new soon. Not today. But soon.

Cool

Cool

I can relate

Finally, someone understands my pain.